1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a plasma display device and a method for driving the plasma display device, and more particularly, to a plasma display device and a method for driving the plasma display device, while minimizing generation of noise.
2. Description of the Related Art
A plasma display device employs a plasma display panel (PDP) to display letters, symbols or varying video images using plasma created by a gas discharge. For this purpose, a plasma display device is constructed with a plasma display panel displaying images and a plurality of driving circuit parts driving the visual display presented to an audience by the plasma display panel.
The plasma display panel of the plasma display device is driven by a frame of data signals. The frame can be divided into a plurality of sub-fields each having a weight value. Light emission cells and non-light emission cells are selected during an address period of each sub-field, and a sustain discharge is carried out in the light emission cells to display video images during a sustain period of each sub-field. And, a gray scale is represented by a combination of the weight values of the sub-fields during which a cell emits light.
The driving circuit part includes a number of switching elements such as semiconductor elements, e.g. FETs (Field Effect Transistors). These switching elements perform a lot of switching operations for a short time. These switching operations give rise to the vibration of the switching elements. The vibration arising from the switching elements either vibrates air or is transferred to other objects to vibrate air, and thus creates considerable noise.
Fourier transform (FFT) analysis shows that the frequency of the vibration transferred from the switching elements controlling sustain pulses among reset pulses, address pulses, and sustain pulses supplied to a plasma display panel is substantially identical to the frequency of the noise generated due to the vibration of the front panel and rear panel when a discharge occurs inside the plasma display panel. In this case, the frequency of vibration arising from the sustain pulses resonates at the frequency of the noise generated when the front panel and rear panel are vibrating. Accordingly, the amplitude of the undesirable noise increases greatly, which causes considerable noise.
In addition, during the sustain period, a number of sustain pulses are supplied to a plurality of sustain electrodes, and a number of sustain pulses are simultaneously supplied to a plurality of scan electrodes. At this time, the sustain pulses supplied to the sustain electrodes have the same frequency as the sustain pulses supplied to the scan electrodes. In this case, the amplitude of the vibration arising from the sustain pulses becomes greater because of the resonance between the sustain pulses supplied to both of the sustain electrodes and the scan electrodes, thus causing greater noise.